Ever since they forgot to ask for the old one back when they upgraded me, I've been wondering what I could do with it. Heck, too bad I don't have a bunch of them, I could make them into a Beowulf cluster!
Though they may bring unjust war against us, contrary to the law of the land in which they seek battle unto us, we shall persist.
Though they stop up port 80, we shall push forth on port 8080.
We shall never surrender - for, when the battle is counted and the dead are honoured, they shall say unto themselves: "These were Geeks, and they had Code."
To see a lot more members of the Order of the Mystical Frog of the Playa hacking.
But we're busy gathering signatures for the Seattle Monorail Initiative today, so I guess not.
Seriously, I think we're all a bit closer to the mystical, whether hacker or not. You need to put things in a frame of reference, and mysticism works pretty darn well when you have to keep trying and trying to get it working.
Although, if we mean hacking as an altruistic state, then there is Good Code, Grey Code, and Bad Code. MSFT churns out Bad Code, many people churn out Grey Code, and few attain the enlightened state of Good Code.
Yes, exactly. Jon's recycling old story lines from the SF pros. Personally, I hope Bill Gibson sues him for infringement, as I'm betting $1 Canadian ($0.00001 US) that there's got to be a couple of copyrighted phrases somewhere in his text.
What we really are seeing develop is this:
1. Cyberhacks are repubbing words that real writers wrote and claiming them as their own. Al Gore is no longer an isolated bump, even if he's a more tech-friendly Presidential candidate.
2. Nations are being divided into feifdoms based on Net use. Only 10% of Mexico is wired, which dooms them to cyberserfdom; Peurto Rico and Guam can use shame to lift them into the Wired category as the US rushes to make sure they're fully served. Other nations will win or lose based on who gets Net-ified and who doesn't. This, naturally, will result in Africa dropping way off the scale and being a total Net writeoff.
3. Americans will project their vision of the world where it doesn't belong. While we have over 50% penetration by high-access (cable modem and DSL) within reach by 2002, the rest of the world is SOL. We will keep acting as if the rest of the world is on the Net, and wondering why we are more than half of the Wired audience, while not clueing in that only Europe and parts of Asia can hope to join in the party.
4. China will take the Great Leap To The Net. They will train cyberwarriors to hack us, start pubbing to the Net in Unicode, and generally force the US to fall back in disarray. Then we'll accidently launch missiles at Hong Kong and start WWIII. Everything will die. Except those people attending Burning Man at the time.
First they took away my access to FBI files, but I said nothing, because I don't have an FBI file.
Then they took away my software, because I bought software in Virginia, which passed UCITA, but I didn't care, because I bought an open source replacement package.
Then they remotely disabled my computer, because I said bad things about the software manufacturer, which was against the UCITA provision on the web page they never told me about, so it was legal. But I didn't care, because I backup my system.
Then they disabled Napster - so I sued their ashes off in court. Because, goldarnit, I'm an American, and you'll take away my right to sue over silly things when you pry the DNA chip out of my brain!
Hey, I'm heading for Burning Man, what do you expect... poetry? I may be a member of the Artists Republic of Fremont and do the Fremont Colonial Expeditionary Passport Office, but I've got stuff to pack...
It's the Bandwidth we need, the power savings, the battery life. When has Joe SixPak ever stress-tested his PC?
Face it, a WebPad that runs at 500 MHz with a battery life of 8 hours is WAY better than one that runs at 750 MHz with a battery life of 3 hours. One is totally usable, the other is must-dock-or-die and a pain to use.
Who cares what the max speed on your car is when the speed limit is only 70 mph? So, you've got a car that goes 200 mph top and I've got one that redlines at 125 mph - when will you use that speed? Probably never, or only once. But if mine gets twice the gas mileage - I win.
So, what we're saying is Toshiba still needs to save power on lighting (screen, backlight) and any hard disk or CD-ROM if they want a decent box. But if the Transmeta chip delivers almost 50%, it's still a major deal, especially if pricing is similar.
On the other hand, a WebPad with 5 hours life is way better than a WebPad with 3 hours life. That's the difference between must-dock and dock-when-done. So Joe SixPak can use it for email and web surfing when watching the big game.
It's up to Toshiba to power down the display and get better energy cost on that, Transmeta just supplies the chip.
Stranger things have happened. Maybe Bill G made a phone call and wanted to snot Linus since he's losing the server war (latest IDC specs show MSFT is number 2 and sinking fast).
Remember too that MSFT is coming out with their X-box, so maybe they want to kill the competition with FUD and the night of the long knives...
[yes, I own MSFT and RHAT stock, so I win either way, but I don't own Toshiba]
I think you're right - it's all about the real world pricing. The killer app is the sub-$500 info appliance - like a webpad (fridge-dockable), an MP3 Net Radio, an email clip-on, something small and relatively inexpensive. And the killer for small form is power consumption.
So, even if it only gets by on 1/3 of the power at the same price, it wins the war for the small form, since that means my web pad, which I will pick up and put down and leave for 10 minutes while cooking dinner, now runs all evening on a charge instead of the Wintel version which runs 1.5 hours, so I have to keep remembering to dock it when I'm not using it.
That's the killer app - the Show Me The Money question - can Joe SixPak and Mary Moolah use it as a toy or do they have to RTFM and think about it.
CDMA, TDMA, just give us GSM - I want to get a real world cell phone!
But, as to your concept of the Iridiums... wouldn't it be cool if they arranged to have some flame out around Burning Man - talk about your Y2K effect!
Must agree that non-profits grok email. Email is the lifeblood of most nonprofits, and they're starting to understand they need web pages.
But they don't seem to want streaming audio or video.
They could definitely use some web-based contact management system, since a lot of officers travel around their regions a bit, but never have cash for the fancy methods. One that generated email reminders would be good as well.
Another concern sometimes is privacy. Many advocacy non-profits don't trust corporations to safegaurd their information, so they would go for privacy, so long as it's easy and free (note I did not say cheap).
PHP based finance system - that and some software for writing grant applications are the major needs I can see.
Most non-profits would write way more grant applications if they had more help with this.
I provide most of the IT services for a local non-profit myself.
can just hear it now - people trying to have cybersex at cybercafe computers...
Well, it's better than meatsex on the cybercafe computers... I mean, those keyboards really distract my girlfriend and the guy at the next terminal always complains that he can't hear the sound on the MP3 he's playing when we get into it...
How many times have we heard that by the year 2000 we'd be driving space cars and have robot maids a la Jetsons? Come on....
You mean you didn't get your robot maid at the New Year's Eve party like everyone else? Well, that explains it... you did get the neon jump suit, though, right?
Well, I don't know much about the screen creds of Neil Stephenson, although I've enjoyed his writing, but... comparing Kurt Russel (isn't that with two L's?) to Ben Affleck is like comparing a two-bit hoodlum to a don. No comparison.
On the other hand, Kurt was a star in my fave movie, where he battled the forces of the underworld of Chinatown, so he's not quite that bad, especially when he's wearing lipstick...
And they do look kind of similar wearing bad polyester suits and glasses, as you might recall...
Wow... Call of Cthulhu as a PC game (hint, it won't run on Linux, only BSD) and some news about DW's Wizards and Warriors - you don't mean Mike William's Wizards and Warriors do you? Just wondering, cause he and SJ and I used to have great fun developing stuff back in the days.
Yeah, but that was cause the Mayor of Seattle is from Vashon Island and thinks that Redmond is a part of Seattle. So, we're canning his ash now that he's been found responsible for the WTO fiasco, and shipping him off to live in France in exile.
Anyone want to buy a used billionaire while we're at it? He's a bit of a megalomaniac, but he's into tech...
Seattle Center is very large, many blocks big, containing EMP (Paul Allen's Blob On Acid), the Space Needle, Pacific Science Center, the Seattle Center House, the Opera House, Key Arena, and more.
Usually it ends up being somewhere between 20 and 40 percent offered up in an IPO. They need some for liquidity for the second (followup) public offering, when they have to get more funds, and some for the workerbees that get options. Plus more for the exec compensations and bonuses.
Figure the institutionals will bleed off a small fraction as time goes by, so as not to kill the market. That's why when you buy pre-IPO they want you not to sell - so they can.
And the lead underwriters all get to hold nice chunks. Some will go to the institutionals (Vanguard, Janus, Fidelity, whatever). Some will go to corporate buddies/clients. Some will go to their best customers (me). Some will be used to provide liquidity in the market for the float, so that trade is more regular.
Well, I know Transmeta isn't a company based around free software. And I know they don't have to.
But: I think they will, if only for the Open Source buzz they'll get and the subsequent media attention. Never underestimate the power of free advertising. Just watch those servers drop under the/. load when they mention TMTA and the media will suddenly decide the stock IPO is Red Hot. Which is where the institutionals who make up the current BoD can make the moolah, in selling to all the stock wannabees who try to follow the buzz.
Call me cynical, but I make money even when the markets drop.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever since they forgot to ask for the old one back when they upgraded me, I've been wondering what I could do with it. Heck, too bad I don't have a bunch of them, I could make them into a Beowulf cluster!
There is no apostrophe in the plural form of "Cisco". If you are going to run a major news site, please follow the basic rules of English grammar.
My grammar may not be English, but she speaks it. And if she wants to say Cisco's, it's her look see.
Though they may bring unjust war against us, contrary to the law of the land in which they seek battle unto us, we shall persist.
...
Though they stop up port 80, we shall push forth on port 8080.
We shall never surrender - for, when the battle is counted and the dead are honoured, they shall say unto themselves: "These were Geeks, and they had Code."
And free bheer
To see a lot more members of the Order of the Mystical Frog of the Playa hacking.
But we're busy gathering signatures for the Seattle Monorail Initiative today, so I guess not.
Seriously, I think we're all a bit closer to the mystical, whether hacker or not. You need to put things in a frame of reference, and mysticism works pretty darn well when you have to keep trying and trying to get it working.
Although, if we mean hacking as an altruistic state, then there is Good Code, Grey Code, and Bad Code. MSFT churns out Bad Code, many people churn out Grey Code, and few attain the enlightened state of Good Code.
Embrace and extend.
Hey, it worked before.
Yes, exactly. Jon's recycling old story lines from the SF pros. Personally, I hope Bill Gibson sues him for infringement, as I'm betting $1 Canadian ($0.00001 US) that there's got to be a couple of copyrighted phrases somewhere in his text.
What we really are seeing develop is this:
1. Cyberhacks are repubbing words that real writers wrote and claiming them as their own. Al Gore is no longer an isolated bump, even if he's a more tech-friendly Presidential candidate.
2. Nations are being divided into feifdoms based on Net use. Only 10% of Mexico is wired, which dooms them to cyberserfdom; Peurto Rico and Guam can use shame to lift them into the Wired category as the US rushes to make sure they're fully served. Other nations will win or lose based on who gets Net-ified and who doesn't. This, naturally, will result in Africa dropping way off the scale and being a total Net writeoff.
3. Americans will project their vision of the world where it doesn't belong. While we have over 50% penetration by high-access (cable modem and DSL) within reach by 2002, the rest of the world is SOL. We will keep acting as if the rest of the world is on the Net, and wondering why we are more than half of the Wired audience, while not clueing in that only Europe and parts of Asia can hope to join in the party.
4. China will take the Great Leap To The Net. They will train cyberwarriors to hack us, start pubbing to the Net in Unicode, and generally force the US to fall back in disarray. Then we'll accidently launch missiles at Hong Kong and start WWIII. Everything will die. Except those people attending Burning Man at the time.
First they took away my access to FBI files, but I said nothing, because I don't have an FBI file.
... poetry? I may be a member of the Artists Republic of Fremont and do the Fremont Colonial Expeditionary Passport Office, but I've got stuff to pack ...
Then they took away my software, because I bought software in Virginia, which passed UCITA, but I didn't care, because I bought an open source replacement package.
Then they remotely disabled my computer, because I said bad things about the software manufacturer, which was against the UCITA provision on the web page they never told me about, so it was legal. But I didn't care, because I backup my system.
Then they disabled Napster - so I sued their ashes off in court. Because, goldarnit, I'm an American, and you'll take away my right to sue over silly things when you pry the DNA chip out of my brain!
Hey, I'm heading for Burning Man, what do you expect
It's the Bandwidth we need, the power savings, the battery life. When has Joe SixPak ever stress-tested his PC?
Face it, a WebPad that runs at 500 MHz with a battery life of 8 hours is WAY better than one that runs at 750 MHz with a battery life of 3 hours. One is totally usable, the other is must-dock-or-die and a pain to use.
Who cares what the max speed on your car is when the speed limit is only 70 mph? So, you've got a car that goes 200 mph top and I've got one that redlines at 125 mph - when will you use that speed? Probably never, or only once. But if mine gets twice the gas mileage - I win.
So, what we're saying is Toshiba still needs to save power on lighting (screen, backlight) and any hard disk or CD-ROM if they want a decent box. But if the Transmeta chip delivers almost 50%, it's still a major deal, especially if pricing is similar.
On the other hand, a WebPad with 5 hours life is way better than a WebPad with 3 hours life. That's the difference between must-dock and dock-when-done. So Joe SixPak can use it for email and web surfing when watching the big game.
It's up to Toshiba to power down the display and get better energy cost on that, Transmeta just supplies the chip.
Stranger things have happened. Maybe Bill G made a phone call and wanted to snot Linus since he's losing the server war (latest IDC specs show MSFT is number 2 and sinking fast).
...
Remember too that MSFT is coming out with their X-box, so maybe they want to kill the competition with FUD and the night of the long knives
[yes, I own MSFT and RHAT stock, so I win either way, but I don't own Toshiba]
I think you're right - it's all about the real world pricing. The killer app is the sub-$500 info appliance - like a webpad (fridge-dockable), an MP3 Net Radio, an email clip-on, something small and relatively inexpensive. And the killer for small form is power consumption.
So, even if it only gets by on 1/3 of the power at the same price, it wins the war for the small form, since that means my web pad, which I will pick up and put down and leave for 10 minutes while cooking dinner, now runs all evening on a charge instead of the Wintel version which runs 1.5 hours, so I have to keep remembering to dock it when I'm not using it.
That's the killer app - the Show Me The Money question - can Joe SixPak and Mary Moolah use it as a toy or do they have to RTFM and think about it.
CDMA, TDMA, just give us GSM - I want to get a real world cell phone!
... wouldn't it be cool if they arranged to have some flame out around Burning Man - talk about your Y2K effect!
But, as to your concept of the Iridiums
Must agree that non-profits grok email. Email is the lifeblood of most nonprofits, and they're starting to understand they need web pages.
But they don't seem to want streaming audio or video.
They could definitely use some web-based contact management system, since a lot of officers travel around their regions a bit, but never have cash for the fancy methods. One that generated email reminders would be good as well.
Another concern sometimes is privacy. Many advocacy non-profits don't trust corporations to safegaurd their information, so they would go for privacy, so long as it's easy and free (note I did not say cheap).
PHP based finance system - that and some software for writing grant applications are the major needs I can see.
Most non-profits would write way more grant applications if they had more help with this.
I provide most of the IT services for a local non-profit myself.
can just hear it now - people trying to have cybersex at cybercafe computers...
... I mean, those keyboards really distract my girlfriend and the guy at the next terminal always complains that he can't hear the sound on the MP3 he's playing when we get into it ...
Well, it's better than meatsex on the cybercafe computers
How many times have we heard that by the year 2000 we'd be driving space cars and have robot maids a la Jetsons? Come on....
... you did get the neon jump suit, though, right?
You mean you didn't get your robot maid at the New Year's Eve party like everyone else? Well, that explains it
Well, I don't know much about the screen creds of Neil Stephenson, although I've enjoyed his writing, but ... comparing Kurt Russel (isn't that with two L's?) to Ben Affleck is like comparing a two-bit hoodlum to a don. No comparison.
...
...
On the other hand, Kurt was a star in my fave movie, where he battled the forces of the underworld of Chinatown, so he's not quite that bad, especially when he's wearing lipstick
And they do look kind of similar wearing bad polyester suits and glasses, as you might recall
Wow ... Call of Cthulhu as a PC game (hint, it won't run on Linux, only BSD) and some news about DW's Wizards and Warriors - you don't mean Mike William's Wizards and Warriors do you? Just wondering, cause he and SJ and I used to have great fun developing stuff back in the days.
Now how about some real competition we all can get in on, building stuff out of AOL CD's.
My son's making a Forgotten Demigod of Pokemon outfit from them. Painted half flourescent red and half brilliant white to make poke balls.
The rest I just use for coasters.
Except of course New Years Eve
...
Yeah, but that was cause the Mayor of Seattle is from Vashon Island and thinks that Redmond is a part of Seattle. So, we're canning his ash now that he's been found responsible for the WTO fiasco, and shipping him off to live in France in exile.
Anyone want to buy a used billionaire while we're at it? He's a bit of a megalomaniac, but he's into tech
Actually, we have the longest line of Pez Star Wars dispensers here where I work.
... unlike those guys in Redmond across Lake Washington ...
It's Seattle, we're better at everything
Seattle Center is very large, many blocks big, containing EMP (Paul Allen's Blob On Acid), the Space Needle, Pacific Science Center, the Seattle Center House, the Opera House, Key Arena, and more.
In addition, we can expect they will ship another chip either just before or immeadiately after the IPO, to give it a good kickstart.
It's all marketing and expectations - thats why Bill G is worth way more than thee or me.
Usually it ends up being somewhere between 20 and 40 percent offered up in an IPO. They need some for liquidity for the second (followup) public offering, when they have to get more funds, and some for the workerbees that get options. Plus more for the exec compensations and bonuses.
Figure the institutionals will bleed off a small fraction as time goes by, so as not to kill the market. That's why when you buy pre-IPO they want you not to sell - so they can.
And the lead underwriters all get to hold nice chunks. Some will go to the institutionals (Vanguard, Janus, Fidelity, whatever). Some will go to corporate buddies/clients. Some will go to their best customers (me). Some will be used to provide liquidity in the market for the float, so that trade is more regular.
Well, I know Transmeta isn't a company based around free software. And I know they don't have to.
/. load when they mention TMTA and the media will suddenly decide the stock IPO is Red Hot. Which is where the institutionals who make up the current BoD can make the moolah, in selling to all the stock wannabees who try to follow the buzz.
But: I think they will, if only for the Open Source buzz they'll get and the subsequent media attention. Never underestimate the power of free advertising. Just watch those servers drop under the
Call me cynical, but I make money even when the markets drop.
Oh, that's assuming you didn't change your email since then. If you did, maybe you should fine tune some of your code real soon, eh?